Movie studios can be sued for deceptive trailers (1 Viewer)

[Wayne_j]

This should have been settled by the customer asking for a refund and getting one.

 

[JimmyO]

Sure that actor that appeared in the trailer appeared in the film. Weren't you paying attention? She appeared in a single frame of film just before the credits. That's what you get for blinking.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

I cannot imagine a scenario where the court says “You have to tell people in advance that Janet Leigh dies at the beginning of Psycho and if you don’t, you’ve committed a crime.”

That's not the issue here. It's that the ad led people to believe de Armas would be in the movie and she wasn't.

That's not even vaguely the same as "trailers must reveal everything that happens in a movie". Not even sure how you made that leap.

 

[WillG]

I mean if this was the actual studio trailer for The Shining



Or Mrs. Doubtfire


I guess you might have something, but yeah ridiculous over some footage that from a trailer that doesn’t appear in the final film. As said though might not hurt to have a “some footage may not appear in final film” disclaimer

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

So, the best trailer of 2022, if there was such an award, would go to Barbie with the 2001 parody teaser. I don't feel that trailer really is telling us much of anything about the picture except that the filmmakers are film nerds. In truth I don't know who came up with the 2001 trailer, who it is supposed to appeal to, or why they would cross 2001 with Barbie...but...it is a bloody brilliant trailer that made me want to see a film I had zero interest in.

Now, if I see the Barbie movie and feel the trailer was better than the movie I won't be upset. I don't feel trailers have to tell you anything about a picture, in fact, I prefer when they don't.

I thought the Prometheus trailer was fantastic. The entire marketing campaign for the film was as good as it gets. The film did not at all, in my mind, live up to that brilliant marketing but I accept that what I see in a trailer is not meant to tell us what the film is going to be. I see trailers as a different art and that you should get creative with them

I am actually baffled that people would get upset that a trailer would not reveal to them what a picture is. I find it really kind of, well...whiney, that people actually get upset about this kind of thing.

The one picture I recall coming out of that caused an angry mob was actually one of my favorite films, No Country for Old Men, when a crowd gathered outside of the theater of angry people who felt ripped off by the picture and wanted to go demand their money back.

As I walked out of the theater into the hall, these people asked me what I thought of the film and I said that I had loved it and thought it was one of the most wonderful pictures I had seen in years. Easily a best film of the year. They looked at me astonished and quickly turned away. They began a conversation about "getting their money back" and marching down to the theater manager to demand that. Before I walked away I said to them, "Nobody owes you anything. Not the filmmakers nor the manager of this cinema. You paid to see a picture, this theater showed you one, if you did not like it, so what. You got what you paid for. The filmmakers made a film, the theater showed you one. You sat in their cinema and watched it. You are owed nothing."

Then I walked away. I feel the same about trailers. You are owed nothing.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

I mean if this was the actual studio trailer for The Shining



Or Mrs. Doubtfire


I guess you might have something, but yeah ridiculous over some footage that from a trailer that doesn’t appear in the final film. As said though might not hurt to have a “some footage may not appear in final film” disclaimer

Love those two trailers. In fact if that had been the trailer for Mrs. Doubtfire, I probably would have laughed even harder at the film.

 

[WillG]

Love those two trailers. In fact if that had been the trailer for Mrs. Doubtfire, I probably would have laughed even harder at the film.

Only nitpick I have is that the Shining one cheats a little bit by using dialogue from “About Schmidt”

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

Only nitpick I have is that the Shining one cheats a little bit by using dialogue from “About Schmidt”

Funny thing is, I kind of feel you can do anything at all in a trailer for a comedy and the effect might be that it enhances the comedy of the film when you see it. In The Shining trailer, if they used a trailer like that then it really would be deceptive and likely would not enhance anything but rather infuriate people. So weirdly, and maybe it is just me, I do feel you have to play it straighter when you are cutting a trailer for a horror film, drama, science fiction, thriller...I guess because it pays more to tip your audiences in these cases as to the type of picture they are seeing. With comedy, making fun of the comedy could make seeing the film funnier.

Also, I once told a woman I was dating that the movie we were going to see was a comedy. It was actually Jacob's Ladder and she found the film utterly terrifying and saw nothing funny about me telling her it was a comedy. So, I guess through experience I kind of feel that letting someone in on if you are going to scare the living hell out of them is the polite thing to do.